


Silent Communication

by Neyiea



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 21:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandy and Pitch flirt with their sand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Communication

It, funnily enough, starts off out of boredom. Pitch had been summoned (and thus kidnapped) to the North Pole and forced to sit at some sort of round table conference while North went on about a truce.

Truce? Ha! Ultimatum was more like it, he’d be forced to agree to their terms one way or another. Pitch had stopped listening after the first ‘as long as you vow not to’ and let his eyes wander to the Guardian sitting right across from him.

Sandy was lightly dozing, which was completely unfair. If Pitch had to be awake for this drivel, so did he. The table was too wide for him to kick the Guardian of Dreams, so he let a thin coil of nightmare-sand slip from his fingers and travel under the table to prod at Sandy’s legs.

Sandy’s eyes snapped open and he sleepily glared at Pitch, who did his very best to look innocent without much success.

He expected some poking in retaliation, but Sandy, secret devil that he was, used the sand to pinch hard at the skin behind his knee.

Pitch barely managed to not leap out of his chair with a yelp and he sent a dark look at Sandy who was now gazing at North far too intently.

Two can play at that game, he thinks, readying his sand for another attack. Before he can command it forward a large hand settles on his shoulder and breaks his concentration.

“So, what do you think?” North asks gravely and Pitch impassively glances at the Guardians around him.

Tooth looks wary, Bunny looks annoyed (as usual), Sandy’s face is carefully blank and Jack looks like he’s been paying even less attention than he has.

“Have you written up a contract?” Pitch asks, planning to find as many loopholes as possible.

“Contract?” North parrots in surprise and Pitch just barely manages to keep from rolling his eyes.

“Contract, treaty, any form of documentation, really.”

“Can you not just agree verbally, right now?”

“No.” Pitch frowns and crosses his arms. “I will do no such thing. With a verbal agreement you can change the rules at any time to suit your needs.”

“We would not change terms of agreement.” North protests, looking affronted.

“Well, since you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you, it appears we are at an impasse until you draw up two contracts, one for each party, for me to sign. Since we are quite done here,” he stands and moves to make a dramatic exit, only to trip on a thin string of dream-sand and fall flat on his face. 

He very slowly pushes himself off of the ground and gives the Sandman the most venomous look he can muster.

It is on.

The next time he’s spirited away to the Pole only North and Sandy are there, eyes glazed over in boredom as Pitch meticulously goes through the pair of contracts to make sure that the wording is exactly the same on each copy. He doesn’t expect that sort of underhandedness from jolly old St. Nick, but he wasn’t taking any chances incase the rabbit had decided to meddle. 

Sandy yawns tiredly and, without even looking up from the papers in front of him, he wraps a tendril of nightmare-sand around the smaller spirit’s ankle and tugs.

Sandy slips down in his seat, arms flailing wildly over his head to try and counterbalance his weight and keep from falling all the way down.

Pitch hides his smirk behind a hand as North sends his companion a worried look.

“Sandy, are you alright?”

Sandy lifts himself back into his chair and nods before slowly turning to look at Pitch.

He ends up dragging him right under the table. Pitch feels a harsh tug on his leg pulling him out of his chair, then a brief flash of pain when the back of his head smashes into the seat on his way down. Then nothing.

He wakes in an unfamiliar room under what feels like a dozen blankets, Sandy sitting beside him with a downright contrite expression on his face.

“Good heavens Sanderson, what a violent being you are.” Pitch forms a hand with his sand that pinches and twists at Sandy’s ear. Sandy smacks it away and uses his own sand to hold Pitch still as he roughly ruffles his hair.

Then, when Pitch attempts to crawl out from under the pile of blankets, Sandy aggressively tucks him back in and moves to sit on Pitch’s chest, keeping him firmly in place.

“Get off of me Sanderson, I have to finish reading the contracts.”

Sandy shakes his head.

“I feel perfectly fine. Remove yourself from my person.”

He flings a fistful of dream-sand in Pitch’s face.

“Cheater,” he calls drowsily before passing out.

The following morning it’s just him and Sandy at the table, North being too busy to sit around as Pitch went through the contracts from the beginning, just in case some unfortunate changes had occurred while he slept (but mostly to be difficult).

He and Sandy poke and prod at each other, more playful than malicious, when Pitch is struck with a thought.

“Don’t you have more important things to be doing right now, like, oh I don’t know, spreading dreams?”

Sandy tugs at something in midair, a spider-silk thin stream of dream-sand that Pitch had not noticed before. His eyes follow the lightly glinting strand to where it disappears between the window panes.

“How far away does that thread go?”

Above his head Sandy replicates New Zealand and Pitch, against his better judgment, lets out a low whistle of esteem which makes Sandy puff up in pride, so to rectify the situation he uses his nightmare-sand to tickle the other immortal until he’s hunched over and gasping with silent laughter.

When he feels something curl around his legs he gives Sandy a dry look and tells him, “I’m not ticklish,” which was most assuredly the wrong thing to say. Sandy binds him to the chair and lets his sand crawl over Pitch’s body until he gets the reaction he’s looking for.

When North bursts into the room, drawn by a hellish shrieking, he finds Sandy looking entirely too pleased with himself and Pitch flushing darkly.

“What was that noise?”

“What noise? There was no noise. You’re going senile in your old age.” Pitch blurts out quickly before hiding his face behind the papers.

“I see.” North leaves the room and slowly shuts the door behind him.

“And there’s a typo in the contract, North! I can’t sign a contract when there’s a typo!” He yells through the door and Sandy rolls his eyes expressively.

“I can nitpick if I like, you can’t stop me!”

Wrong. Thing. To. Say.

This time when North hears the high pitched shrieks, he dutifully ignores it.

Half an hour later Pitch pokes his head out the door, yelling that he’s ready to sign his life away. Finally. North makes his way to the room and thinks nothing of it when Pitch asks for a pen knife. He rifles through his pockets and pulls out a letter opener.

Pitch sighs and plucks it from his hand. “I suppose it’ll have to do.” And then he proceeds to slit open his thumb.

Sandy and North jump forward at the same time, North stealing the letter opener back and Sandy pressing a handkerchief against the deep cut.

Pitch furrows his brows at them. “You two are awfully jittery.” 

“What did you do that for?”

He squints, looking at North as if he is the strange one. “To sign the contracts.”

“In blood? You don’t need to sign in blood! Just name is fine.” Sandy nods vigorously in agreement.

“How boring.”

Sandy sends North to get a first aid kit and then worriedly hovers around Pitch like he’ll swoon from blood loss at any moment. Pitch doesn’t even bother trying to stop him.

At the end of the day Pitch signs both copies and North feels like he can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Until Pitch mentions returning again on the first of the month. Every month.

North sputters, “but that’s when-“

“You have your super-secret Guardian meetings? I know.”

“But-“

“The contract stipulates that I need to check in with at least one of you on a monthly basis,” Pitch states matter-of-factly while he examines his nails, “I may as well come while you’re all gathered together so that you don’t have to scramble after each other every month to see if I met up with someone.”

“That is very… Logical.”

“I know.” Pitch smirks. “See you in a few weeks.”

North is too busy worrying about their future meetings to notice the black sand ruffling Sandy’s hair, or the gold that’s running over Pitch’s cheek.

Two weeks later Pitch is once again sitting at the blasted round table, bored out of his skull. The unnerved glances he keeps getting were amusing at first but now they’re just a minor irritation. Do they honestly think he’s going to try something now while they’re all in the room? He would be flattered by their fear if he weren’t so annoyed that they thought he was an idiot with no self-preservation instincts.

He sighs and rests his face in his hands as he turns away from Jack, who had slyly frozen over Bunny’s eggnog, to see Sandy staring right at him.

Pitch frowns and taps out a morris code question against Sandy’s hand.

_What are you looking at?_

Sandy slowly breaks out into an unnerving grin and that’s when Pitch feels it, a slight scratch of something sneaking into his boot.

 _Don’t you dare,_ he knocks out quickly, but Sandy is no longer paying attention to him, instead turning his focus to Tooth who is lamenting about sugary drinks.

The sand sinks deeper and runs softly along the arch of his foot. Pitch bites his lip and tries not to squirm. He attempts to command his own sand to pinch, prod, tickle, anything to make Sandy stop, but he has not been using it long enough that he can control it with ease when he is not able to fully concentrate, so at the most he just grips Sandy’s hand and refuses to let go.

The sand is moving faster now, a couple tendrils have snuck between his toes and Pitch bites down harder, feels his shoulders begin to shake. He’s not going to be able to keep it in much longer.

He barely hears Jack give the punchline to a more than likely terrible joke, but the others chuckle politely and he takes his chance.

He’d rather have them think he has a terrible sense of humour than know his feet are ticklish.

He bangs his head against the table and lets out the laughter that had been bubbling up within him. It takes a full minute for him to calm down and when he finally falls silent he refuses to raise his head.

“Dude, I’m funny, but I’m not that funny.” Jack says and Pitch feels his cheeks burn.

He shifts his head upward slightly to glare at Sandy, who is finally extracting the sand from his boot and is gazing at him warmly.

 _I like it when you laugh,_ is tapped against his thigh and Pitch huffs. He will avenge himself for this next month.

 _I will destroy you,_ he lightly strikes down on Sandy’s hand.

 _You’d better check yourself before you wreck yourself,_ is what he gets in response.

Pitch has no idea how to reply to that, so instead he just spends the rest of the meeting idly tugging at Sandy’s sleeves.

It’s the following month that things progress in a way that Pitch had not predicted.

Sandy steals Jack’s usual spot on Pitch’s right and slowly looks Pitch up and down before nodding to himself, apparently coming to a decision.

Pitch pokes him in the side, curious, and Sandy wraps a tendril of sand around Pitch’s lower back in a half embrace.

Not quite understanding, but never one to be outdone, Pitch copies the action and is rewarded with a tight squeeze and a hooded look cast in his direction.

The sand stays around him the entire meeting, sometimes rubbing his back, sometimes running down the curve of his spine in an almost sensual way, always touching.

He sneaks glances at Sandy out of the corner of his eye, but it isn’t until the end of the meeting that Sandy turns to acknowledge him, looking Pitch straight in the eyes as his sand runs down lower than ever before and _pinches._

He jumps out of his seat and gasps in surprise, which has the unfortunate effect of drawing attention to himself.

“You okay Pitch,” Jack asks, “your face is looking a little purple. Is that normal?”

“Yes, I’m quite fine. Thank you,” he assures the others and when he turns back he finds Sandy’s chair is already empty. Sneaky bastard. 

He spends an embarrassing amount of time during the next month practicing flirty movements with his nightmare-sand, but the end result is something he’s pleased with. He’s ready to reciprocate anything Sandy throws his way.

This time when Sandy takes a seat beside him he’s one step ahead, winding nightmare-sand around his lower back like a particularly bendy arm and giving him a quick hug. The Guardian of Dreams smiles and copies the action.

For one glorious moment Pitch is under the impression that he’s the one calling the shots. Then he feels a soft touch against his neck.

It’s feather light, barely there, and he’s absolutely sure it’s going to drive him insane.

He starts nudging at Sandy’s ankle, miraculously keeping a straight face even though he’s essentially playing footsie with a former fated enemy while in a room full of several other former fated enemies.

Maybe this isn’t a good idea after all, but Sandy glances at him in muted surprise and that more than makes up for how un-thoughtout his plan is.

 _I’ve been practicing,_ he raps out against Sandy’s calf.

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted that, because the look Sandy throws him in return is decidedly wicked.

The sand making it’s way up his leg is not unexpected, but how far up it goes is. That coupled with the insistent stroking against his neck has him squirming in his seat by the end of the meeting.

When he feels the sand begin to slip away and sees Sandy move to leave he barely has the time and coherency to strike _tease_ against his leg.

If Sandy thinks he’s just going to let this sit on the back burner for another month, he’s got another thing coming.

It takes a week but he finally catches sight of Sandy somewhere over Norway and, in a not completely unexpected turns of events, Sandy is the one who corners him. The Guardian of Dreams gazes at him intently as he sends out a tendril of dream-sand to run across Pitch’s cheekbones and Pitch does likewise, heart rate picking up when Sandy presses his lips against the dark grains and shoots him a coy look.

Well this is escalating quickly. He tries to think of something he can do in retaliation but Sandy is already advancing. His golden sand begins to swirl around Pitch’s black, creating beautifully intricate knots while his gaze intensifies. Pitch can do little more than watch, mouth going dry, as their sand merges into one giant convoluted tangle before exploding apart like a firework.

He goes still, waiting for a sign, and Pitch raises a hand to catch some of their mixed sand and brings it to his lips.

Sandy grins with palpable satisfaction and makes his way forward, stopping just in front of Pitch.

“It’s not nice to make promises you don’t intent to keep,” Pitch murmurs, reaching out a hand to run along Sandy’s cheek.

Sandy presses his own hand against Pitch’s, keeping it against him as he taps out with his index finger, _who said I wasn’t going to keep them?_

“Even so, I can’t help but think we’ve got some lost time to make up for.”

A smirk very slowly crosses over Sandy’s face.

_As you wish._


End file.
